The invention relates generally to telecommunications networks and, more particularly, to a system for coordinating calls between an adjunct device and a switching system.
It will be understood that the typical telecommunications network consists of a switching system connected to other switching systems in the network where selected ones of the switching systems are connected to customer premise equipment (CPE) such as telephone sets, personal computers, terminals and the like such that the CPE can be connected via the switched network. It is known in the art to provide voice response systems as adjuncts to the switching systems. One use for such voice response systems is to handle relatively large call volumes for commercial enterprises to provide voice interactive services with a calling party. Such systems are used to answer calls to "help" lines or for customer service requests such as commonly found with large institutions such as banks, airlines, or the like. A calling party is connected to the voice response system via the switched network and interacts with the voice response system using voice recognition technology or by inputting information using a telephone keypad or the like. The voice response system may access an associated mainframe or server network and data bases to obtain relevant calling party information.
Adjuncts such as voice response systems, automated response units, or interactive voice response systems are connected to the switching system over a voice interface such as an analog line, digital line such as T1, Primary Rate Interface (PRI), Basic Rate Interface (BRI) or the like. The analog line provides a low cost connection for voice but is incapable of transmitting data such as called party number, directory number, or calling party number to the adjunct. It is possible to use a digital connection between the switch and adjunct to transmit both voice and data; however, digital connections are relatively expensive and not all allow call transfers.
In either network arrangement, a problem exists when it becomes necessary to transfer a calling party from the voice response system to an agent station for further action. In such situations, because the voice response system began processing the call, it typically will have obtained relevant transaction information from the calling party and the mainframe data base. When the call is transferred to the agent station, existing voice response systems cannot forward the gathered transaction information to the agent station because these systems cannot correlate the original call between the calling party and the voice response system with the new call between the calling party and the agent station. As a result, the calling party and agent must recreate the process previously performed by the voice response system in order to obtain relevant information from the calling party and data base. As will be apparent, this duplication of effort wastes time and resources and can cause frustration for the calling party.
Thus, a voice response system in which the information gathered by the voice response system can be associated with and transferred to a subsequent agent station is desired.